On War & Stuff

Can You Say ‘Tragedy’ and ‘Piracy’ in the Same Sentence?

“It’s really hard to place bad actions in context without seeming to play the apologist for them”, Matt Eckel laments at WPR:

In the Levant, for example, attempting to illuminate the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza is difficult without seeming to implicitly justify terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians. Likewise, it’s hard to point out that the international community has done nothing for Somalia, often aiding and abetting those forces that keep the country in chaos and destitution, permitting fishing fleets to plunder its resources and the industrial world to use it as a trash dump, without making these pirates out to be some kind of seafaring Robin Hoods.

It’s not, actually. Most people literate enough to find things out on their own already know what’s behind this issue. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of American bloggers who have reduced Somalia’s tragedy to three sniper shots and a happy skipper.